Eseutil /K Checksum Mode

Topic Last Modified: 2006-06-09

The Eseutil tool in Microsoft® Exchange Server 2003 includes a /K switch that you can use to verify the page-level integrity of the information store databases. The /K switch can be used to detect file header damage. File header damage may occur in databases, log files, patch files, or checkpoint files. In addition, you can use the Eseutil /K command to verify the checksum integrity of the transaction logs when all the databases in the storage group are dismounted.

Note:

The checksum mode does not run a database recovery. If a database is inconsistent or is in a "dirty shutdown" state, Microsoft recommends that you perform a recovery operation to make sure that the database operations are completed correctly. After you perform the recovery operation, you can use the Eseutil tool to perform the integrity check.

With the inclusion of ESEFile features in Eseutil, the checksumming capabilities of Eseutil are extended to include streaming databases, log files, and checkpoint files. Note the following uses of the Eseutil /K checksum command:

If you checksum only a streaming database, only the header pages in the database will be checked. The data is ignored. If you wish to checksum an entire streaming database, you must run checksum mode against the Exchange Database (.edb) file. The reason for this is that the checksums for data in the streaming file are not actually stored in the streaming file, but in a table in the .edb file.

The Eseutil checksum mode will not allow you to checksum individual pages in the database. But you can use the page dump mode to determine whether the checksum on any given page is correct.

Prior to Exchange 2003, a database could be checksummed during online backup, by running Eseutil /G, or by using the ESEFile utility. Eseutil replaces the Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server and Exchange Server 5.5 ESEFile support utility.